1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications. More particularly the present invention relates to transmitting and receiving messages, through a global communication network such as the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
In communication through a global network such as the Internet, there is a case where persons having different mother languages exchange messages. As a method of exchanging messages, there are electronic mail, chat, net news (NetNews) and the like.
In many information processing terminals such as computers, characters can be input with a language of one character code system set by the user, and only other restricted languages (support language) can be displayed. In communication through the global network, when a message is transmitted to another computer or the like, the receiving computer does not necessarily support the language of the message.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Hei. 11-353310 discloses a technique in which when a document file is transmitted, the environment of an apparatus at a transmission destination is judged from an address of a transmission destination, a character code of the transmitted document file is converted into a character code which can be handled by the apparatus at the transmission destination, and it is transmitted.
Although the foregoing technique of converting the character code of the document file is effective for one-to-one communication, such as the electronic mail, or communication in which a transmission destination is specified, it is difficult to convert the character code of the message in accordance with the receiving party environment. It is also difficult to transmit in an environment, such as in the chat, net news, or message exchange in a network game, in which it is expected that the general public reads the message, and the party reading the message can not be specified when transmitting the message, and a difference in support languages is wide.
In the present environment of message exchange in the network game or the like, in a message in accordance with a language (nonsupported language) which is not supported by the computer of the receiver side, there occurs a phenomenon, so-called illegal character, in which characters of the transmitted message are changed into other characters in accordance with the character code system used at the reception side and are displayed. A display of the garbled reception message has no meaning and is not significant.
In addition, since the illegal character of the message is also produced by operation failure of a computer itself, omission of part of data due to a communication error, or the like, if the illegal character is produced in the received message, the user can not easily understand its cause, and the user feels a sense of uneasiness and does not know how to deal with it.
Some conventional computers or the like estimate a support language from a character code string of a received message and display the message in accordance with a character code system according to a language of the received message. However, since the support language is estimated based upon the character code string of the received message, certainty is lacking, and it is impossible to completely avoid a garbled message.